Good news about teen births

Rates for Hispanic teens decline.

Copyright 2013: Houston Chronicle

Published 5:03 pm, Monday, June 3, 2013

While pro-choice and anti-abortion groups may seem to be intractable political foes, one would like to think the two groups share similar underlying concerns: healthy babies, empowered mothers, happy families.

Hopefully, both can also agree that the blessing and the burden of a child should be on those who are prepared - and more often than not, those parents are not teenagers. So people of all political stripes should be glad that America's teen birth rates plummeted by 25 percent between 2007 and 2011.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teen births are at a record low of 31 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19, and further demographic breakdown provides even more eye-opening statistics. For example, the greatest drop in teen birth rates was among Hispanics, plunging from 75 births to 49 per 1,000.

However, this drop wasn't as stark in Texas, California or other states with large Hispanic populations. Teen birth rates in Texas are still high, correlating with our inadequate sex education in schools and often lack of access to contraception, particularly in rural areas. But these more objective measures don't explain everything. For example, despite the states' policy differences, Hispanic communities in both Texas and California follow similar trends.

Perhaps more than anything, there is a change in outlook.

"There is more attention on education, career and the future," as Dr. Janet Realini, head of Healthy Futures of Texas, a San Antonio-based organization focused on preventing teen and unplanned pregnancies, told the Associated Press. In that sense, it is heartening to see a growing part of the national fabric embrace a way of life where the opportunities of work and education are incentive to wait to start a family.

Beyond sex ed and health programs, it simply falls on teens themselves to make the right choices for their future.